Five studies published in theJournal of Experimental Social Psychologyand selected without advance knowledge of their contents, were analyzed with respect to the epistemic and modal status of their hypotheses. It was found that the general hypotheses were a priori and noncontingent (necessarily true), whereas the local auxiliary hypotheses were empirical and contingent. Hence, the data were only relevant for the latter. It is conjectured that suchpseudoempiricalstudies may abound in contemporary psychology. They remain undiscovered because researchers unreflectively believe thatall propositions that can be related to data are empiricaland thatpsychological terms need not be defined.Only when terms are defined and presuppositions (axioms) are stated, can one determine the epistemic and modal status of a given proposition, and, hence, whether or not a study is pseudoempirical.